Love Bruises

Cas doesn’t see Dean again until two days later. He’s sitting in the common room, watching Anna and Gabriel go head to head at some Wii dancing game, when Dean walks in, book in hand and sits on the other end of the couch. He gives Cas his usual gruff, Hey, man, and then buries his nose back in his book for the rest of the night. It’s definitely not ‘social’ per-say, but certainly a step up from what Cas usually sees of him.

As the next weekend approaches, Garth and Zeke start pulling together a group to drive out to a Shredder show in Cedar Mills. In the end, they get enough people to fill two cars, Sam and Dean included. On Saturday morning, they load into Castiel’s Jeep and Ruby’s old Expedition. Surprisingly, the Winchesters get split up and Dean ends up in the backseat of Cas’ ride, just behind the passenger seat. Cas spends most of the ride trying not to stare at Dean’s profile in the rear view mirror.

The show doesn’t start until seven but they arrive in Cedar Mills at around four. It’s a nice city with lots of pubs and shops, so they all decided to explore on their own and meet back just before the clubs’ doors open.

After everyone disperses - Sam leaving with Ruby, Garth, Anna and Abbie heading for an incense shop, and Zeke and Gabe meeting with a local tattoo artists for a consultation - Meg, Castiel, and Dean are left without any real direction.

“So what should we do?” Meg asks to the space that lies between the three of them.

Dean looks up at Meg, then Cas, and gives a small shrug before crossing his arms over his chest.

Looking around, Cas spots an open pub and nods in its direction. “We’re all 21, right? Let’s leave the kiddies to it and grab a beer, yeah?”

Meg’s eyes light up and she nods emphatically before turning to Dean. He just shrugs again before following Meg across the street, Cas falling silently in step beside him.

At the bar, they have a beer each. Castiel chooses a light ale, but Meg and Dean settle on some dark lager. Meg and Dean fall into easy conversation about some issue she’s having with their shared advanced physics class. Every so often, they try to include Cas in their conversation, but Cas left physics behind (and science in general) after he completed his pre-reqs and all their mumbo jumbo is lost on him.

When they move onto cars, Cas tries to join in with talks of his Jeep. He tells them it’s in pretty good shape for a 12 year old car, but lately it’s been doing a weird kick-back thing when tries to reverse. “Yeah,” Dean says, a small smile fitting his mouth, “I noticed.”

He tells Cas it’s probably a transmission thing. If he’s lucky it just needs 'transmission fluid' or a clean filter. “You can drop it off at the shop sometime and I can take a look.”

This is how Cas learns that Dean part-times at Singer’s Autoshop.

Over the course of the evening, Cas actually learns a lot more about Dean. It turns out that Dean and Sam ('Sammy' he calls him), were raised by their father in a small town north of Receda. Their mother was killed in a fire before Sam was even a year old and their father criss-crossed the country as a trucker. Dean spent his first two years at a community college so he could stay close to Sam and once he was old enough, they both applied to GeorgeU.

The way he tells it, Cas has no doubt there must be much more to the story than Dean’s telling. Still, he’s happy to get even that much.